Knowing who calls
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
March 21 , 1999
A DEBATE has started over the pros and cons of the new `Caller ID'
service the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) is offering
customers.
The system, with a gadget attached to the telephone, allows the
subscriber to see the telephone number a caller is using before picking
up the telephone to find out who it is.
The subscriber paying for the Caller ID service has several options which
a letter writer in yesterday's Chronicle, "among the first to queue up
for this service on the first day it was introduced", outlined.
"I first learnt about it during a visit to Canada last year, and since my
return home had been badgering GT&T with requests for
the service to be introduced in Guyana", the writer said.
Now the letter-writer can effectively deal with a neighbour who had been
"viciously abusive and indecent" on the phone before, when complaints
involved a lengthy process of reporting to the Police and getting the
calls traced.
Anyone who has been a victim of obscene and threatening telephone calls
can readily empathise with the experience of the letter-writer and the
subsequent relief the Caller ID service affords.
Telephone customers can now also handle those who simply hang up their
phone when calls are answered.
In other words, the Caller ID service offers subscribers some form of
relief to what once was an extreme form of annoyance, molestation and
threats.
And it makes it easier for those sick persons who persist in making bomb
threats on the telephone to be tracked down.
As the letter-writer notes: "I am in charge of a Government installation
which is a frequent target of bomb scares. Caller ID will not completely
eliminate this type of mischief, but who knows, I might get lucky and
apprehend the culprit. At least they can no longer make these calls from
the comfort of their homes."
We are sure many GT&T customers share the relief the Caller ID offers
against the telephone `sickos' out to make life miserable for others.
There are some, however, who feel that Caller ID is an `invasion of
privacy' and this is the source of the brewing debate.
A telephone company official, in a letter to another newspaper, says the
firm offers subscribers with unpublished telephone numbers a facility for
`blocking' their numbers from being seen on the phones called.
But, as the official points out, people generally should have the right
of knowing who's knocking on the other side of the door.
The telephone company, which has been faced with persistent complaints of
corrupt practices among some employees, would have to take extreme care
in who it is offering this `blocking' service to. We feel it should be
restricted to selected high-level government and security officials,
whose `secure' telephone numbers should not be a matter of common
knowledge, and not to those with `influence' who feel they are somehow
entitled to special privileges.
People paying for the Caller ID service have a right to know who is
calling them and whether they should take the call or not.
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